Sequoia: healing from the roots up

Sometimes I go to speak…. And it’s like every organ in my body has shut down. The ones that help me to breathe, dilute, process. It’s like a clamp is on my throat. It’s like my brain has been wiped clear. Sometimes I go to speak, and everything I am so passionate about is crowding on the other side of a thin curtain , but I cannot push the curtain aside to share my bounty of knowledge . Sometimes I go to speak and someone has turned the power-off button on my body. All that glorious, lived, authentic knowledge that I have culled over a lifetime is sitting there in my powered-off body, with no way to be communicated to those around me. Sometimes I go to speak and someone has turned all the bright lights on. They are blinding me and I am stunned into silence. Sometimes I go to speak and my soul remembers how it was born into silencing. Every bright, beautiful, true thought that I formulated was crushed in the fabricated ether of conformity to strict dogma. ...

Stories live in our bodies Our stories live in our bodies, like animals within the confines of the forest. They are safe there, but they need to be expressed. Let your body live your story, leaking out rays of its light and dance to the life all around it. And when it is time, let you body be absorbed back into the ground, sowing its particular story into the earth to become one with all the other stories since the dawn of time. Our stories need to be shared. They are crying to be shared with others. Sometimes our bodies are in pain, holding on to some trauma, grief or anger, which is held; safe kept in the compliant, faithful body , until the time should be right for it to be released. Our wise bodies know when that time is. Let them live there; trust their bounty, their wisdom. That of your stories, and your body. Over time your body will shed the husks of the stories that are no longer yours to carry within you. And still after mo...

 The fertile doing-nothing I am here. The fertile doing-nothing has taken me into her bosom. Slowly, after many years, I have finally succumbed to her insistency.   She was never loud, but she was  pervasive. Always there – in my subconscious, in my nature, in the deep things that called me to be true to myself.  Everything that was different than she is stood out like a sore thumb, grating at my spirit, sometimes clawing, until I could no longer resist.  I could no longer resist her beauty, insistency, and raw truth. I am here. And the fertile doing-nothing has taken me over. I am her willing captive, and I am free. She allows me to break free from all the half-truths that society has tried to shove down my throat since I was born into this world. The half-truths that promise glory in exchange for pain, pressure and stress. The half worn truths that compelled me to try to fit in, to be like everyone else, and to conform to a life that sucked ...

The map of my daydream is a thin sliver of grey, shimmer sheening in the sunlight. It is a thick rind, ripe with possibility. It dances like the sparkles in the center. It is a tall, still aspen. And the particular grey blue of the winter sky. It is the silhouette of the orange chair, and the messy hair bun of my love, smoking his joint. It is the quietness of the morning. It is the hot bitterness of my green tea. It is the paper weight, and the plastic cover crinkle of my library book – Seven Thousand Ways to Listen. It is the joy of knowing that everything is going to work out, according to plan. (Whatever that is.) Tickety Boo of the Universe. The more I let go, the more it works out, defying reason. The beauty of the daydream is – it is not practical, it is not reasoned. And it is all the better for that. It is the sound of the piano – resonant, insistent, probing, melodic.  It is the sound of my laughter. The map...

Can you endure your uncertainty until it shows you another, deeper way?    -Mark Nepo Being lost, I am found. What I was taught was sin, is actually my salvation. What I was taught was bad, is good. Dark, light. Dangerous, liberating (although that is a paradox.) I need soothing. To get over the pain of being taught wrong. But this is life, discovering that you were taught wrong, by your tribe. Everyone experiences this. And now it is simply time for you to relearn. It is your choice. Re-invent your life in a way that feels right to your soul. And all that undoing becomes a part of your liberation. My god is brooding over this exploration. They are watching. But they have always been watching. Tight lipped, tight fisted, ready to pounce with words of judgment, with looks of disapproval. Will I live the rest of my life under this shadow? Or will I risk shocking them, myself. Will I risk liberation? Will I risk detaching from what they thi...